She Effin' Hates Me

by Scarlett Savage

  “Yeah, Southie’s just far enough away, but still close enough.” Laura gestured to one of her clerks, who took her place behind the counter. “Come on, let me show you around my world.”

  The objects that were lovingly placed around the shop weren’t just for decoration. All had a purpose, or a use, either practical or religious. There was something almost hypnotic about the crystal display. The knives—or athames, pronounced ath-UH-mays as Laura pointed out—came in all sizes and shapes. Some had elaborate, bejeweled handles and fancy sheaths; others were plain and wooden, encased in only a leather envelope. But without exception, all of the blades were dull.

  “I don’t sell bladed weapons,” Laura stated firmly. From the way she said it, Suzanne could tell she’d said this a thousand times or more. She ran a hand through her pretty blond hair, the two small brass pentagrams in her ears swinging with the movement. “They can take them to a bladesmith or sharpen them on their own if they want. I only sell knives intended for spiritual use.”

  “What sort of knife would be needed for a spiritual use?” Suzanne was completely baffled now.

  “Athames,” Laura answered cheerfully. “Look it up, you’ll find the explanation enchanting. I did.”

  The other items, like the baggy, colorful skirts, the lace-up shirts, the scarves, the dangling jewelry, while just a tad flamboyant for Suzanne’s own tastes, were kind of fun. There were definitely a few cute tops in the collection, and the fountains, made of crystals and stones, were downright soothing.

  “What’s this?” She picked up something that looked like a yellow, opaque lump, but it smelled like gardenias in full bloom. The stamp on the label read “Hermione's Herbals.”

  “Soaps, with a foot scrub,” Laura told her. “I do the soaps with my own two hands, but all the scrubs, foot, body, and facial, in the shop here are Hermione’s.”

  “Really?” Suzanne had been right, Laura’s daughter was more mature than she looked; ten years old and already an entrepreneur.

  “Oh, yeah,” Laura nodded rapidly. “That kid was born with a thousand-year-old soul and the mind of an accountant. She studied the books on herbs and oils and incenses, and then, last year, she made her first batch. All the money goes into her college fund—and let’s just say it’s well past four figures.”

  “Wow,” Suzanne marveled. “And she’s smart enough to save it by hitting her mom up for fudge money.” Both women laughed.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t want her buying cars she can’t drive or houses she can’t move into—although last year she was talking to her dad about ‘investing in real estate,’ and I have to say, that’s a damn good idea, considering it’s the only thing that always appreciates.”

  “And these?”

  Suzanne picked up something called a “Spell in a Bottle.” It was a small glass jar with all the ingredients, apparently, for the spell in question, written down on a small scroll of parchment. There were spells for money, there were spells for happiness, there were spells for health . . . But most of all, there were spells for love. Wouldn't that be nice, Suzanne thought wistfully.

  “They’re just what they say they are—spells. You follow the directions, and they work,” insisted Laura.

  “Oh, come on,” Suzanne blurted, and then looked hastily around. Putting the glass bottle down, she asked, “I’m sorry, Laura, but you really can’t believe that, can you?”

  “I most certainly do,” Laura said serenely. She picked up a small bottle, which held, according to the label, a spell for prosperity. “Listen, I have no idea why soaking a bit of apple tree branch in cinnamon for three weeks, then burning it on the night of a full moon makes you prosper. But I also don’t know why mixing chocolate, butter, and flour and applying heat makes a cake.” She smiled. “I just know it does.”

  “Wow,” Suzanne said, shaking her head a little. “Either the crazy is rubbing off, or I totally understood what you just said.”

  They crossed to the back of the store then, and Suzanne sucked her breath in, completely blown away. “Oh, wow,” she whispered, and Laura grinned again, that happy-go-lucky grin Suzanne would forever associate with high school.

  “I had a feeling you’d think that.”

  It was a bookstore, built right into the back of the store, away from everything else. A huge, hand-carved maple sign proclaimed it “The Book Nook.” It had its own back entrance and a coffee, cocoa, and tea bar. Plush leather chairs that looked like they’d lovingly held a thousand readers or more were tucked away in various corners, and an ancient emerald green velvet sofa stood proudly in front of a fireplace. Matching loveseats, equally time-worn, sat on either side. The sturdy coffee table looked hand-carved rather than produced in some factory.

  “Is this a Jacob Winter piece?” Suzanne asked, running her hand along its even seams. Something about it reminded her of the steamer trunk he’d made for her parents.

  “You bet it is—one of about seven he made. Just before Bridge hit the bestseller list. It’s a collector’s item. I’ve had more offers for this than half the pieces in the store, I swear.” Laura ran her fingers along the scars and scratches, which enhanced the piece even more. “But some things just aren’t for sale. He made the shelves too.”

  The shelves showed the skill of Jacob’s craftsman’s hands just as well. They were the kind of shelves you would expect to see in the homes of dukes, of families with old money—in general, in the homes of people who had libraries. Also dark maple, they rose almost seven feet tall. The appropriate old-fashioned stepladder obligingly rested on the end of every third aisle or so.

  “Paganism, Wicca, Goddess Worship,” Suzanne read the sections aloud. “Celtic legends, candle magick, herbalism, yoga, color-charting . . .”

  “There are also nine different kinds of bibles on my last count,” Laura told her. “As well as the Koran and the Torah. And on the back of that shelf you’re looking at, there are a bunch of works on ghost sightings, UFOs, the Tarot, divining, past life-regression . . .”

  “Will there be a quiz on this later?” Suzanne pleaded. “Don’t get me wrong, a lot of this stuff really interests me—more so now that I’ve seen it up close and personal—but geez, there’s so much of it. I feel like I don’t know where to begin.”

  “Here.” Laura handed her Silver Ravenwolf’s To Ride a Silver Broomstick and Scott Cunningham’s The Truth about Witchcraft Today. “These two will answer all your questions about our religion, and if they inspire any other interests, like candle magick, well, we’ll just go from there.”

  Suzanne took the books, flipping through them as Laura got them a couple of honey teas with vanilla creamer. “Soon enough it’ll be time for indoor fires.” Laura took off her knee-high suede boots and propped her stockinged feet on the coffee table with a satisfied sigh. “Still too damn hot outside.”

  They spent a few minutes catching up, the way old acquaintances do. Who from their graduating class was married, who had divorced, who was successful, who was caught buying scrip drugs down in Lawrence. It was fun, but Suzanne would remember every so often that she was gossiping with the most popular girl in school, and her head would spin a little.

  “So, what’s up?”

  Suzanne glanced up to see Laura’s crystal blue eyes trained on her like a cool, friendly homing signal. Not much got by those eyes, she supposed; likely a holdover from the Horrible Lawyer days.

  “What’s up with you specifically, I mean,” Laura added. “You’ve already filled me in on Molly’s schooling—congratulations, by the way, that’s terrific—and your mom’s issues with her neighbor. How are you doing?”

  “Oh, you know.” Suzanne casually sipped her coffee. “My only kid’s going off to college, my divorce isn’t final yet because my ex is dragging his feet on the financial settlement . . .”

  “Divorce, divorce, divorce.” Laura sang the word, taking some of the sting out of it. “It’s a real bitch.”

  “You’ve been divorced?” Suzanne was surprised. That j
uicy tidbit hadn’t made it to the Portsmouth grapevine.

  “Oh, yes indeedy-do.” Laura placed her tea carefully on a coaster on the coffee table, smiling ironically. “For the longest time, there I was, living the life I’d always set out for, and I was just miserable. Absolutely miserable. Prozac didn’t help, booze didn’t help, spending huge amounts of money on art I didn’t understand didn’t help, working eighty hours a week didn’t help . . .”

  “What did help?”

  “Well,” Laura flashed that ironic smile again, “I had myself all convinced for a while that the reason I was so suicidally unhappy with my job was that I just needed a good man to come back to at night. To cook for on the holidays and weekends, rub his feet by the fire, bear his overachieving young . . . You get the picture.”

  Suzanne looked around the woman-empowering surroundings and then back at Laura. “I’m sorry, I just can’t imagine that color on you.”

  “Oh, I wore it, let me tell you.” Laura nodded rapidly. “I went out and found myself an investment banker, Joe Collins, and we bought ourselves a perfect little third-floor apartment on Park Avenue. He was gorgeous—probably still is—and made ten times what I did. It was the fairy-tale wedding with five hundred people I’d never met, and I wore a dress that cost more than my first car. We went on vacations to England and France; Aruba, I can’t count the times; toured the Orient, Australia.” She ticked off the locations on her fingers like items on a grocery list, and with the same amount of enthusiasm.

  “You should have seen our apartment on Park Avenue. It was like Bombay Company and Shabby Chic exploded in there. I had clothes from every name designer from Chanel on down—my closet was so big, it had its own bathroom.” She shook her head, embarrassed by the blatant materialism.

  Suzanne wondered what it would be like to live like that, with unlimited funds in the alleged coolest city on earth. “I hope you get to the bad part soon. So far, it sounds like a shopping addict's dream.”

  “Exactly. But that’s all it was,” Laura emphasized. “Lots of stuff. One day, I woke up, and my husband had left a note on his pillow, saying, ‘Let’s have lunch, I have a late squash game, and oh, by the way, I think it’s time for us have a baby. My boss was making comments the other day that I’m the only partner in the firm that doesn’t have any kids.’” She shook her head; it seemed the audacity of the note still hadn’t quite sunk in. “Think of it. The same four-line note that included my lunch plans also planned my reproductive ones—all for how his bosses saw him at work. It was like getting hit in the face with a hammer. I told him I wasn’t happy, I wanted out of the marriage, and I moved out later that week. We were divorced within the season, and I let him keep the apartment.”

  “How did he take it?”

  “He beat the ever-loving shit out of me.” Laura calmly sipped her tea. “Broke one arm, cracked a rib, bruised a kidney, and this,” she pointed to her upper left bicuspid, “is a crown.”

  Suzanne’s jaw dropped. “What?” she stammered. This was the kind of thing that happened in the news or to trailer trash, not educated, employed people of means. “What?”

  Laura placed a cool hand over Suzanne’s suddenly inflamed one. “Sweetie, it’s okay, it really is.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Suzanne said furiously, “when we get a baseball bat and meet the son of a bitch in a dark alley. Then I’ll feel very okay.”

  “Violence doesn’t solve violence,” Laura admonished, but she leaned forward to kiss Suzanne on the cheek. “But I feel better with people like you and Billy on my side. Thank you for the offer; I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel better.”

  “But, was he . . .” Suzanne stuttered, forced herself to calm, and started again. “Was he like that before?”

  “No,” Laura emphasized. “Not once, not ever. And that’s the fascinating thing.”

  “There’s something fascinating about this?”

  “Oh, absolutely.” Laura leaned forward. “Think about it. It was enough for him. This cold, hard, shallow life full of aesthetics—that was his dream. He wanted it. And when I told him that I wouldn’t play the game anymore, and why, he was . . .” Laura frowned, trying to remember exactly how he’d been before the rage, trying to separate feeling from fact in order to make an accurate observation. Suzanne was overwhelmed with admiration that Laura would still seek to be so objective. “Well, I think—I’m sure, that is—that it would have been enough for him. To be Mr. and Mrs. Corporate Couple who hardly knew each other, who worked fourteen-hour days, who had two-point-five kids raised by boarding schools and the help, who had pieces of art by every hip new artist, and for whom every designer-of-the-moment came in to redo the walls . . . He didn’t want me getting closer, because clearly there were some ugly things there.”

  “Like his disgusting excuse for a soul?” The depth of Suzanne’s fury surprised her.

  “Wow, you are a loyal bird, aren’t you?” Laura hooted again. “I really am over it. But, even before he went nuts on me like that, I was . . . I was drowning in loneliness, but he was filling up on things.” She shrugged, philosophical after all this time. “But hey, if that’s the way he wants to live his life, that’s his life. I just realized it couldn’t be mine. And believe it or not, it helped me. Not the beating, of course, but living like that, with all those beautiful things and being so alone. It was suffocating. I was drowning in so many material things. It really forced me to realize what I wanted, what would make me happy, as opposed to what I thought should make me happy. And killing him would only shorten the life that is clearly making him miserable. I let the fact that he has to be him every day of his life be its own punishment.”

  “Wow,” Suzanne said enviously, “you are so . . . together. Some things never change.”

  “Oh, don’t let me kid you.” Laura ran her hands through her hair, shaking her head. “That’s just my veneer. I’ve been doing it since high school. Before, even. That’s who I am: the girl who’s got her game so straight she doesn’t need any help.”

  Suzanne wanted to shake her head and tap one side firmly. Was she really hearing these words? These gut-wrenchingly honest, soul-baring words from someone whom, until last week, she had written off as a Miss Phony-Baloney Sunshine, Portsmouth class of ’94?

  “Well, let me tell you,” Laura went on, “I needed just as much help as anyone, maybe more, and I was so damn proud I couldn’t even let anyone close to me to really see me. That’s what I need to work on, asking for help. Letting people see I’m not perfect.”

  “Yeah, because it would make the rest of us feel a whole lot better about our lots in life,” Suzanne agreed. “What happened to Joe? You reported it, right?”

  “Yes, I did. I did all the right things, pressed all the right charges, but in the end I just hit him where it would really hurt him—in his wallet. I knew I could use the money to finance my own dreams,” she spread her arms, “and the amount he had to pay hurt him a hell of a lot more than jail time would have. You think I’m together? It’s the secret of life: You act like you’ve dealt with all your shit, and people will actually think that you have. I’m trying to find a more honest way to deal with my craziness, of which, believe me, there’s plenty.”

  Suzanne laughed, amazed. “You are the single most self-aware person . . . No, I’m going to stop because you’ll just find a way to self-deprecatingly cut yourself down on that one.” She raised her empty mug. “But I better see some of this craziness damn quick, or my self-esteem will severely plummet.”

  “What’s this?” Billy Wentworth suddenly leaped into the room with a broad grin on his handsome features. Suzanne would have recognized him instantly. His face was a bit older, and there were some grey strands in his curls, which were spattered with paint flecks. He was wearing clothes that had seen many creative afternoons, judging by the many stains and holes in them, but he looked no less adorable than he had twenty years before.

  He bent down to kiss Laura, who lit up as soon as her e
yes found him. “Hey, baby,” she said happily.

  “Oh, Lordy, Lordy, don’t tell me,” he backed up, hand on his chest. “Don’t even try to tell me that the class of 1994’s head cheerleader,” he pumped his fists in a cheer and gave a fine rendition of a jumping kick, “and the star of the drama club, on- and offstage are actually hanging out together?” He covered his eyes with one paint-scarred hand. “They’ll be gossiping about this one for weeks!”

  “Sadly, that’s probably not too far from the truth,” Suzanne retorted. “We’re part of the New England grapevine. There are practically hourly updates. And my mom’s the worst of all—my dad used to call her the Town Crier.”

  “Good old Ava.” Laura affectionately plucked paint flecks out of her husband’s hair. “She comes in here looking to see if I’ve got new books on angels every month or so. I’m supposed to call her the minute they come off the truck.”

  Suzanne blinked. “Books on angels? Really? My mom?”

  “It helps her with her sobriety,” Laura added, which startled Suzanne in her seat. She would have spilled her tea if there had been enough left. “She usually comes in right after the lunchtime meeting at St. James, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.”

  “Hey, we’re not discriminatory here at Goddess Treasures,” Billy drawled. “We’ll take anyone’s money, even those darn drunks’. Sell those tourists books on how to spot a UFO using only a penlight and a stick of gum.”

  “Billy!” Laura admonished, and Suzanne laughed, feeling a little queasy. Her mom was one of those drunks, after all.

  Billy and Laura kissed again, and this time he shook some paint flecks onto her nice outfit. She shrieked a little in complaint, but it was the kind of shriek that was made mostly of pleasure.

  Suzanne smiled and politely turned her eyes away from the moment, but she was thinking of the fact that Laura, and who knew who else, casually knew about Ava’s jaunts to the hallowed halls of sobriety at AA.